


Argue me tender, argue me true

by Wild_Imagination



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Flirting, Homophobic Language, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Protective!Erik, Resolved Sexual Tension, Smut, they are rivals!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-13 16:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21171896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wild_Imagination/pseuds/Wild_Imagination
Summary: “You’re having your bad-boy crisis with seven years of delay, Charles.”“Why must he spit out those hateful, misanthropic, science-free, separatist ideas of his with a face like that!”Charles and Erik attend the same college, and they never, ever agree on anything.But that's fine, because Charles can't stand him.No, really.





	Argue me tender, argue me true

“Stop staring,” Moira admonished him, not even looking up from her notebook.

“I’m not staring,” grumbled Charles. He wasn’t.

“Then stop glaring.”

“I’m…” Charles cut himself off. He was.

He tried to take his eyes off of the brown leather jacket in the front row of the class and failed.

Moira glanced at him and said nothing.

“It’s just so… so unfair!” Charles cried then.

Moira sighed long-sufferingly. “You’re having your bad-boy crisis with seven years of delay, Charles.”

“Why must he spit out those hateful, misanthropic, science-free, separatist ideas of his with a face like that!”

And what a face, he thought. His jaw was so sharp you could slice your tongue on it.

Light stubble, high cheekbones, straight nose and thin, sultry lips.

Lord.

That anti-social bastard couldn’t have been more perfect if Charles had chosen him from the Calvin Klein’s underwear catalog.

But then he opened his mouth and uttered something appalling about how the Mutant Registration Act was going to pass and show ‘humanity’s incapability to evolve from their atavistic need to destroy everything they deem different’, and Charles’ blood boiled for entirely different reasons.

“He made some fair points last week in Sociology,” said Moira.

“Fair points,” echoed Charles, indignant. “So the discomfort I felt in my back was your knife!”

“Well, they make you wear a collar during classes, and it does suppress your telepathy,” Moira reasoned.

Charles swallowed and felt the skin of his throat stretch against the plastic ring. It was quite tight, these days. Moira’s thoughts, close as she was, were little more than weak whispers.

“They need to be sure I won’t cheat,” he murmured. “You leave your cellphone on the professor’s desk during tests, too.”

Moira grimaced. “Not nearly the same thing, though, is it?”

The professor entered the room and the chatter around them subsided as all the students found their seats. He had barely put his briefcase on the desk when Charles saw him freeze.

“Lehnsherr,” he said, and Charles could almost imagine his astonishment flapping against his crippled telepathy. “What do you think you are doing?”

Each pair of eyes fled immediately to the very first row of chairs and an excited buzz filled the class.

Lehnsherr had extracted a handkerchief from his sleeve and was now tying it around his head to cover his eyes.

One slight tug at the dark cloth and the blindfold was ready.

From his position, Charles stared at the back of his head with a knotted stomach.

“I’m merely evening out the circumstances of this lecture, professor,” Lehnsherr said, slightly accented voice as clear and calm as ever. “If one of us has to attend with one of their senses cut off, then so should I.”

The attention was all on him now, and Charles felt like all the breath had been squeezed out of him. Something warm had started pooling in his lungs in its place.

“But you hate him,” busted out the professor, quite unprofessionally. “You antagonize each other every step of the way, I thought- ”

“First of all,” Lehnsherr interrupted, blunt as a razor. “Xavier is a fellow mutant, and I’m always going to step up for one of us, no matter how ridiculously naïve and blindsided his ideas of human nature are.”

Charles scoffed, and for a moment he could swear he had seen one of Lehnsherr’s ear lift as if he was smiling.

“And secondly, I argue with him because he’s the only one in here worth arguing with.”

***

Ok, there was a fair chance that Charles was a bit moved. And flattered.  
So what?  
It didn’t change anything, anything at all. 

He still thought Lehnsherr had a persecution complex, and Lehnsherr still thought he was a spoiled know-it-all.

At the end of the lecture, Charles collected his notes and put them hastily in his bag. They weren’t of much use, anyway: his attention had been all over the place for the last hour and a half. 

Well, it had been only in one place, to be honest.  
Charles sighed heavily at his incoming headache.  
“You should go talk to him,” Moira said, suspiciously careless.  
“I know,” said Charles.  
“He’s leaving,” said Moira.  
“I know,” said Charles.  
“Well, aren’t you going to stop him?”  
“I’m not going to chase Erik Lehnsherr around campus.”  
“As if you were not doing that already.”  
“I beg your pardon, I do not-”  
“Just. Go.” Moira pushed him out of his seat and he almost face planted on the worn out carpet covering the floor. 

He straightened his cardigan with as much dignity as he could muster and glared at her.  
She glared harder. “I’d better see you later.”

He rolled his eyes, threw the bag over his shoulder and started climbing down the stairs. Just as he reached the ground floor, he saw Lehnsherr walking through the door together with a flood of other students. “Bollocks.”

He sprinted, elbowed a few people out of his way, tripped, elbowed some more, and got to the corridor.  
“Lehnsherr!” he called when he recognized his slender figure several feet away. “Wait!”

Lehnsherr stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned, saw him and arched an eyebrow.  
The other students dodged him without complaint.  
Charles covered the distance between them faster then he would have liked and stopped in front of him. 

Only then he realized that they had never actually talked one-on-one, they had only growled and barked at each other from one end of the classroom to the other.  
He sure was tall.  
“Uhm,” Charles said, quite inspired.  
He lowered his gaze, saw the handkerchief tied to Lehnsherr’s wrist and almost said something on the line of ‘didn’t know you were into that kind of thing’.  
Thank Lord he shut up.  
“Xavier,” Lensherr said, his voice an amused rumble. “What do I owe the pleasure?”  
He folded his arms over his chest, and the leather jacket squeezed his biceps some more.  
Charles almost forgot what he wanted to say. “We are not the best of friends.”  
“Are we not, now?” Lehnsherr smirked with half of his mouth, and his lips were very, very remarkable.  
“Well, you did call me ‘self-entitled brat’ on the very first Politics’ lesson.”  
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Lehnsherr, with the air of someone who didn’t expect to be corrected in the near future. “But you had referred to me as ‘a megalomaniac conspiracy theorist’ only an hour prior.”  
“Your perspective on the Mutant-Human Relation was hideous at best.”  
“As opposed to yours, Mr. Appeal To Their Better Nature and hope for the best.”

They glared at each other. 

Charles frowned. “That’s really not how I pictured this conversation to go.”  
Lensherr shrugged, placid. “As I said before, I don’t mind arguing with you.”  
“About that…”  
“That?”  
“Everything you did in the classroom,” Charles clarified, suddenly bashful.  
He cleared his throat and scratched the skin covered by the collar. “Thank you. As I said, we are not friends and you did what you did anyway. It was, uhm, nice of you.”  
He almost expected a sardonic remark, but it never came.  
Lehnsherr tilted his head and nodded slowly, as if deep in thought. 

Charles squirmed under his scrutiny, suddenly very conscious of intense eyes, chiseled jaw and long fingers.  
Time for a dignified retreat. “I’d better go, now. I’ll see you i-”  
“I can fix it for you, if you’d like me to,” said Lehnsherr curtly. 

Charles was puzzled.  
“Your collar,” Lehnsherr pointed at it with a brusque movement of his chin.  
His voice was dark and unforgiving. “It’s too tight. It’s leaving marks on your throat.”  
Charles touched the offending object with his fingertips. His Adam’s apple bumped against it every time he swallowed. “I thought it was made of plastic.”  
“Mostly,” said Lehnsherr. “But not entirely. The internal mechanism is metal, I just need to understand how it works. May I? It’s quite unsettling to watch.”

Was Lehnsherr watching his throat? Charles nodded briefly and then witnessed with wonder as Lehnsherr stepped towards him and lifted his hands.  
The handkerchief dangled happily at his wrist.

For an insane moment, Charles thought that this time he was actually going to be strangled, and exhaled a nervous laugh. Lehnsherr must have been on the same line of thinking, because his mouth scrunched to hide a smile. “There are definitely more entertaining ways to shut you up, Xavier,” he commented casually.

Charles stared at him with his eyes open wide. He could feel his cheeks begin to heathen. Was Lehnsherr flirting with him?

Long, steady fingers positioned themselves on the sensitive skin of his throat and on the collar, and Charles straightened instinctively his head.  
His heart was hammering in his pulse point. 

Lehnsherr’s face was closer now, and thin eyelids fluttered over green, green eyes. The collar quivered for several moments, then it expanded.  
Charles could pinpoint the second it peeled off his skin and came to rest more comfortably around his neck.  
He winced at the sudden rush of air against his newly exposed and damp skin, but the relief was hard to ignore.

Lensherr retreated with a satisfied sound at the back of his throat. “Better?”

“Infinitely better, thank you. Your control over your mutation is brilliant.”

Lehnsherr was visibly startled. He cleared his throat, scratched his nape and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Erik Lehnsherr, self-conscious. Charles’ smile widened.  
“Well, I guess I’ll argue with you later in History, then.”  
“I can’t wait,” Lehnsherr answered, and it looked like he really meant that. 

Good, because Charles found out he couldn’t wait either.

***

“No way, there’s no way that I have been called to the principal’s office with Charles Xavier. What did you do, gave the professor an unripe apple?”

Charles rolled his eyes and turned his back to the closed office door to face Lehnsherr.  
He was in all black, that day: black t-shirt, black jeans and black boots. 

Charles felt his internal temperature increase just by looking at him. 

“They were strawberries, actually, but Mrs. Stevens is allergic. What about you, did you spray-paint ‘humanity sux’ on the toilette wall?”

Lehnsherr smirked the thin, sharp half-smile of his and walked past him in the corridor. He let his bag fall to the ground with a thud.  
Charles wondered if it contained a Guy Fawkes mask and a manual titled ‘Building molotovs for dummies’. 

“Getting warm. It was ‘down with the humans’, with an upside-down double-u.”

Charles snorted despite himself. “Jokes aside, I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

Lehnsherr threw himself on a plastic chair near the principal’s door and admired his own nails, unconcerned. He stretched his long legs and crossed them at the ankles like someone very acquainted with their surroundings. “I could be here for three, maybe four reasons, it depends on the principal’s sense of humor. Want to borrow one from me? Any preference?”

“You are unbelievable.”

“It is called ‘civil disobedience’, you should try that sometime.”

Charles folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “You like to cause trouble,” he corrected.

“They are not mutually exclusive.”

“You climbed the cafeteria’s beams to have lunch on the roof with Angel just for the fun of it.”

Lehnsherr stopped looking down at his nails. 

“First of all,” he declared, “I didn’t climb anything, I flew there. Secondly, I did it because they had explicitly and unjustifiably forbidden it. As I said, civil disobedience.”

Charles spread his arms open wide in astonishment, palms up. “How on Earth is preventing students from falling from the roof unjustified?”

“Some of us can fly. They are just trying to force their stupid human la-” 

“You could fall anyway!”

“Not if they let us practice flying on the roof!” 

“And what are they supposed to write in the school regulations, ‘it’s strictly forbidden to stroll on the college’s slippy roof unless it is to avoid falling from said roof in the future?’”

“Lehnsherr,” a firm voice commanded, startling them. “Xavier. In my office. Now.”

Charles blinked and noticed that he had bent towards Lehnsherr’s sitting silhouette during their argument. They hadn’t even heard the principal’s door open. 

He quickly regained his composure and slid into the office, getting past the principal with a hasty ‘Good morning, ma’am.’

She waited for them to close the door before leaning against her neat desk with her arms folded. 

For a few moments she just stared at them, unimpressed. Charles was waiting for a well-deserved reprimand about respecting others’ opinions and wondered if apologies were good ice-breakers. 

“I don’t have anything to confess,” Lehnsherr lazily said.

Charles shot him a dirty look. 

The principal shifted her eyes in a movement that suggested her desire to fully roll them. “Yes, Mr. Lehnsherr, I know your m.o.”

Lehnsherr smirked proudly. 

“I wanted to inform you that I’ve finally been able to persuade Trask’s Industries’ spokesperson to come back to our school for a debate. It wasn’t an easy task, you can imagine, considering your last endeavor.” 

Both Lehnsherr and Charles diverted their eyes. Charles pursued his lips. 

“He has made me promise that neither of you will ask any question, intervene or even cough during his speech or after. You will not approach him or his car,” at that she deliberately looked at Lehnsherr. “You will applaud politely, and you will leave the classroom as soon as it is over. Is everything clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Charles said, just as Lehnsherr said: “It seems to me that my freedom of speech will be severely limited.”

The principal clenched her jaw and drew a deep breath. “Your freedom of speech made the representative faint on stage. We had to call an ambulance. One freshman cried.”

Lehnsherr smiled again, all cocky cheekbones and straight neck, and Charles himself had a hard time concealing his mirth. That had been quite the debate. 

“He just doesn’t perform well under pressure,” Lehnsherr soberly offered. 

“I only tried to help his position in the argument,” Charles added. “Lehnsherr was wiping the floor with him and it was inhuman to stand by and do nothing.”

“Thank you for that, Xavier. I’m flattered.”

“Don’t mention it, fair is fair.”

“Out of my office,” the principal snapped. “And don’t argue for the rest of the week. Or I’ll suspend you both.”

“For arguing?”

They were thrown out with no further comments. 

***

Charles stopped, turned and stared.

The girl that was walking behind him almost dropped her tray in a poor attempt at dodging him. His abrupt change of route created a small pile-up in the cafeteria and quite a few complaints. 

“What,” he said, “the hell?”

Lehnsherr put his chin on his hand and raised an eyebrow. “What hell?”

Charles stomped towards his group and slammed his half-empty tray on their table. “You cannot seriously be relying on Stanford’s experiment to sustain your ridiculous ideas about human behavior!”

Lehnsherr smirked slowly, more satisfied with every tooth uncovered. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“I do not eavesdrop,” exclaimed Charles, indignant. “It seems I automatically tune in your nonsense, that’s all.”

“Oh, if a scientific experiment doesn’t give the results you want it suddenly becomes nonsense, doesn’t it? Not very empiric of you, Xavier.”

Charles felt his own face crumple up. “Angel, be a dear and move on over, please. Thank you very much.”

He sat down right in front of Lehnsherr and puffed out his chest, ready to begin. “First of all, don’t you dare question my scientific approach, you maniac. Tons of psychologists have stated that that ‘experiment’ was biased and it has been proven time and time again that Zimbardo lied in his report about what actually happened there. He didn’t even publish his results in a scientific journal!”

He inhaled. 

He could pinpoint the exact moment when Lehnsherr decided that that was a conversation worth having, because his eyes twinkled as he leaned forward and quickly shot back. “Haslam and Reicher replicated that experiment and obtained the same violent outcomes.”

“Not the same. The participants themselves admitted that their conduct was a performance influenced by Zimbardo and designed to obtain those results.”

“We know for certain that two of them didn’t act of their own free-will, but what about the other twenty-two participants?”

“Oh,” Charles commented, leaning against the seatback with his arms folded smugly. “That sounds scientific alright.”

Lehnsherr smiled at him, then, lower lip trapped under front teeth, and Charles felt as if someone had pushed him off the chair. The skin of his hands itched, and he had to repress the sudden urge to grab that face and claim that mouth.

“Please,” Sean’s weak voice came from the other side of the table, startling both of them. They attended History together, which meant he had witnessed a few dozens of those arguments. “Don’t you ever flirt in front of me. This is too much already.”

Charles frowned and Lehnsherr opened his mouth, but before any of them could actually reply, an exasperated chorus rose from the other students at that table. “They already are.”

It might have had something to do with the adrenaline of the argument clouding his judgment - it wasn’t his fault, it was like a drug to Charles -, but when Lehnsherr turned his head to stare at him with those eyes of his wide open and his cheekbones flagging red, Charles’ mouth moved on its own accord. 

“I assure you,” he enunciated clearly, his own eyes never leaving Lehnsherr’s. “If I were flirting with him, he would notice.”

He then proceeded to wink at Lehnsherr’s stumped expression, steal a fry from his plate and leave. His departure was accompanied by catcalls. 

Oh, he did love winning an argument.

***  
Charles woke up abruptly when someone touched his arm.  
He instinctively unleashed his telepathy to scan his surroundings, but it slammed against his head. He whined. Bloody collar.  
“Wakey wakey.”  
Charles slowly blinked and lifted his head from his crossed arms. His back cracked. “Lehnsherr?”  
He was half lying on the table, his head propped up on his fist. Charles noticed that his long torso covered the whole distance between them. A smiling flap of uncovered flank stared back at him. “I wish I could say that you drool in your sleep.” Lehnsherr was unjustifiably disgruntled.  
Charles looked away and saw his notes spread all over the table, then understood: he had fallen asleep while studying in the now deserted library. Around them, the lights were going off one after another.  
Charles rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”  
“Past midnight,” Lehnsherr said, and stood up. “I was leaving when I saw you here. We’d better go before they close the doors.”  
He was noticeably tired, his hair in disarray and the hem of his t-shirt crumpled. His later-than-five o’clock shadow glided on his jaw and across his long neck.  
Charles thought he looked like the lead of a romantic comedy the morning after. He self-consciously passed his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat. “Thank you, but I can’t. I need to finish these physic… Exercises.”  
He blinked at the papers and dragged them across the table with two fingers. At the bottom, there was a circled number in a handwriting that wasn’t his.  
He lifted his eyes and saw Lehnsherr scratching the back of his neck and looking away. His cheeks were turning red. “You had only made a calculation error,” Lehnsherr shrugged, as if it explained everything.  
Charles felt his heart flutter. “I don’t know how to thank you, my friend. You didn’t have to.”  
“It was no problem, really. Besides,” Lehnsherr smirked and became more self-possessed. “Who knows how long it would have taken you to solve these. You need to be as awake as possible to Candide your way out of my reasoning.”  
Charles barked a surprised laugh, already half in love. “Have you really just used Voltaire to mock me. And past midnight?”  
Lehnsherr didn’t answer, but smiled and collected his books. He looked at him one last time and moved towards the exit. “Goodnight, Pangloss.”  
“Sleep well, Martin.”

***  
As far as Mondays went, that had been quite tiresome. 

First of all, Charles had suffered all day from the usual, thundering headache caused by having spent the weekend without the collar. His telepathy always slammed non-cooperatively against the cage of his mind at the beginning of the week. 

Then he had been harassed in the corridor during the short break after Sociology, which was unoriginal. This time he had been accused of winning the genetic lottery as the scum of the Earth, being faggot and mutie. 

He answered calmly that whilst there was a high chance that mutation had a hereditary factor, his appreciation for dicks was his own merit. 

Also, he was bisexual. 

He had been pushed against the wall for his trouble before anyone could intervene. His headache had worsened. 

He had been so exhausted during the following lecture that he had not been able to wipe the floor with Lehnsherr’s opinions. 

His greatest regret. 

He had just sat there at the back of the class, lulled by that familiar, husky voice, and had answered with a pained “no comment” when the professor directly and quite awkwardly had asked him if he really had nothing to add. 

Contrary to what he had believed would happen, Lehnsherr hadn’t appeared satisfied at all. He had peered at him with his biteable jaw clenched and a hazy look in his stormy eyes, then had turned his attention back on the professor. 

Charles had felt a pang of disappointment at the quick dismission. The headache had worsened again. 

Which explained his current location. In front of the door of the Infirmary well past midnight. 

The corridor was empty, silent and dark. Charles could stretch his telepathy only for ten meters or so to scan his surroundings if he wanted to keep his head from splitting in two. All clear. 

Now he only had to pick the lock, break in the Infirmary, grab some God-given painkillers for his otherworldly headache and go back to bed. Probably easier said than done. 

But then again, his fellow students were able to smuggle in alcohol and joints, it would be dishonorable for him to fail to grab some medications and be caught in his pajamas with his nose in the Aspirin jar. 

He was getting on his knees with his credit card in one hand and the torch of his cell phone in the other, ready to operate, when something fluttered against his telepathy. It was another mind, approaching. 

Charles quickly turned off the torch and flattened against the wall. His heart was running wildly inside his ribcage, and he had to cover his mouth with his own hand to shut off his panting. 

Fuck, he thought. And he kept on thinking it when the unmistakable light of a torch started painting a growing, yellow stain on the moquette in front of his crouching body. He seriously considered dropping everything and start running for his life, when… 

“Xavier?” 

Charles literally melted against the wall. “Lehnsherr?” 

A blinding light showered him and Charles groaned painfully. “What are you doing over there?”

“Hiding from you,” Charles answered honestly, and got to his feet. He put the cellphone and the card safely away in the pockets of his oversized trousers. “I thought I was about to be busted.”

Lehnsherr finally directed the light on himself, showing a familiar frowning expression. Charles almost smiled at the sight. “Couldn’t you feel me approaching?” He illuminated briefly Charles’ torso. “You are not wearing your collar.”

“I could feel someone approaching, but I didn’t know what your mind felt like before tonight. I should have dug deeper to get a hold of your name from your thoughts.”

And Charles realized that he actually had never sensed Lehnsherr’s mind before. It was… thrilling. He couldn’t help but poke lightly at it, as if testing its texture.

It was neatly organized, blunt and unyielding. It tasted vaguely of metal, which was deeply amusing, strong as steel, but also incredibly bright in spots that Charles started to follow like bread crumbs in a forest. He stopped abruptly on the threshold of one of Lehnsherr’s memories of his mother and returned to the surface. “What are you doing here?” 

“Same as you, I suppose,” Lehnsherr said, then smirked. His teeth glittered in the dark corridor. “Though not with a credit card.”

“It would have worked,” Charles muttered, and suddenly sobered. “Why the infirmary? Are you unwell?”

Lehnsherr fidgeted with his torch and very pointedly moved it away from his own face, but not fast enough. 

“Darling,” Charles gasped, “what happened to your eye?”

“Darling?” Lehnsherr echoed, a choked sound, but Charles had already moved forward and was now holding his jaw with extreme care. 

He gently turned Lehnsherr’s head so that an angry bruise the size of an apple was now staring at him. Charles instinctively traced its swollen rim with the tip of his index finger, light as a feather, and ended up caressing the paperthin skin of a temple. Lehnsherr shivered and Charles stepped away. 

He realized what he had just done and the darkness swallowed his blush. He hid his hands behind his back. 

It was surreal, talking without actually seeing each other; there were no physical proofs of existing boundaries between them, and no witnesses. Their voices rose from barely illuminated, ghostly bodies and lingered in the charged air of the night. 

“It was a punch,” Lehnsherr explained with a shrug. “A couple of hours ago. I didn’t notice it had landed quite so well until I saw the bruise. Was hoping some ice could still help.”

Charles’ chest knotted in worry. “Did someone assault you?” 

More fidgeting. “It was the opposite, actually. Knocked politely on the asshole’s door and less politely knocked him out. It was a fair fight.” Lehnsherr smiled and winced right after. “Still worth it.”

Charles frowned, conflicted. “I’m sure you had your reasons to be cross with them, but you must know that violence is never the answer, my friend.”

He expected a roll of eyes and a scoff, but they never came. Lehnsherr tilted his head and looked right at him. “I really wanted him to regret what he had said.” Then he grinned, wide and playful. Charles had never thought Lehnsherr could actually smile so much; it was astonishing to see. “Besides, you cannot really lecture me about morality right now. Were you not trying to break in and stole from the Infirmary in the middle of the night?”

Charles folded his arms on his chest and lifted his chin. “I would hardly call it ‘stealing’, we don’t usually pay for that st-”

“Who’s there?” 

The disinterested, unknown voice had come from a couple of doors around the corner, and Charles looked at Lehnsherr with what was probably pure horror. He whispered frantically: “Do we actually have a night patrol?”

He saw Lehnsherr rolling his eyes, then everything went dark. 

He heard a mechanical click, the dragging of a wooden door against the moquette, and suddenly he was being pulled by his arm into the Infirmary. 

They stopped just as abruptly after a few steps, and in quick succession, Charles collided with what was probably Lehnsherr’s broad back, bounced, heard another soft click, and hit the closed door with the back of his head. 

He oofed painfully, and something flew to cover his mouth before he could utter another noise. 

He held his breath and listened. The sound of heavy steps stopped on the other side of the door, and Charles heard with his heart in his throat the shuffling of the door being pulled. 

The door against his back didn’t give in an inch, and a few moments later the steps went away. 

Lehnsherr turned the torch on again, and Charles’ just acquired looseness vanished in an instant.

The other man’s lithe body was hovering above his, tilted towards the door and effectively caging him against it.  
They were so close that Lehnsherr’s calm breath was ruffling the hair on top of his head, and Charles found himself hypnotized by the rhythmical sway of his firm chest under the thin undershirt. At the peak of each inhalation, it almost brushed against his shoulder. 

He clenched his fists at his sides and exhaled shakingly, fighting the urge to close his eyes and bury his nose in the uncovered, tender hollow of the clavicle in front of him. Lehnsherr smelled so good. 

His long fingers were still covering Charles’ mouth, slightly rough against the sensitive skin of his lips, which were getting warmer by the minute. The tip of his thumb was caressing mindlessly and maddeningly the light stubble on Charles’ chin. 

Charles swallowed drily and lifted his eyes. The narrow light of the torch cast deep shadows on Lehnsherr’s face, sharpening his jaw and cheekbones. 

His eyes shone dark and hot as flaming charcoal, and Charles felt too large for his own skin. His insides were probably catching fire. 

When Lensherr spoke, it was a deep murmur. “I’m letting you go if you admit that I’m right about Trask’s research.”

Charles smiled with half of his mouth and felt Lehnsherr’s fingers shift to follow the movement. He made a show of getting more comfortable against the door and tipped his head back to find a better position for his neck. The message was clear: he was in no hurry to appease him. 

Lehnsherr snorted, then sighed wistfully. His hand slipped away from Charles’ face, but his thumb got momentarily caught in the curve of his bottom lip. The short nail scraped at his skin, and Charles breathed hotly against it. 

When Lehnsherr stepped back, his body instinctively moved forward to follow him. 

Lehnsherr turned away and started rummaging on the first shelf he found. The light coming from the streetlamps outside sketched closets and cupboards around the room. “Wha-”, he stopped to clear his throat, and the roughness of his voice partially dissipated. “What do you need from here, anyway?” 

Charles shook his head to wake up from his slumber and winced under the weight of his headache. At least his heart was finally giving a break to his ribcage. “Painkillers. My telepathy is killing me today and I’ve run out.”

“I noticed,” Lehnsherr hesitated, and even his roaming hands stopped for a moment. Charles saw his back stiffen. “I noticed that Mondays are always rough for you.”

Charles bit his bottom lip to keep himself from smiling like a lunatic. It was only polite concern. “It is because of the collar. I wear it for ten hours a day, five days in a row, then stop wearing it all together on the weekend,” he shrugged. “My telepathy needs time to readjust. It would probably help if I could put it on and take it off during breaks, so the change wouldn’t be so abrupt, but…”

“But?” 

“I tried to explain it to the principal, but they don’t trust me with the keys.”

Lehnsherr turned around again, his mind buzzing with fury and his face sat in stone. “Those human imbeciles. They have no idea how lucky they’re that a mind like that was given to someone with your principles.” 

Charles stared, taken aback. Lehnsherr looked away and mumbled: “Why are you smiling. Don’t smile.”

“I’m not,” Charles lied. 

“It was not a compliment.”

“Are you sure? It really sounded like a compliment to me.”

“Your sense of ethics is frustrating and unjustified. How is that for a compliment?”

“I’m not as pristine as you like to believe, my friend,” Charles admitted. “As you said before, we are here together, after all.”

Lehnsherr looked at him in the half-light. “That we are.”

“Oh, look.” Charles crouched over a basket and emerged with a one-use bag of ice. He squashed it between the palm of his hands and handed it to Lehnsherr. He saw his eyelids flutter in relief when the ice touched his swollen skin. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Are you hurt anywhere else?” 

Lehnsherr hesitated. “My ribcage is a bit sore, but I don’t know if there’s a bruise or…”

Charles huffed unhappily. “You really should have found another way to solve the argument, you blockhead. Come on, let’s give a look.” 

He stepped closer to Lehnsherr and grabbed the hem of his undershirt. Then froze. “Torch, please,” he whispered huskily. Lehnsherr handed him his cellphone and straightened his back. His chest didn’t move, as if he was not breathing at all. 

Charles inhaled, exhaled, and lifted the fabric with his right hand. 

Every inch of skin revealed was like the smell of freshly baked croissant when you are too late to have breakfast properly. A sweet torture that you can almost taste. 

He let the tips of his fingers skim over hard bones and taut muscles, looking for damage. His index hesitated in the hot dip between two of Lehnsherr’s ribs, and Charles saw his stomach twitch briefly.

“Sorry,” Charles murmured. “My hands are always cold.”

Lehnsherr cleared his throat above him. “It’s fine.” 

“You don’t have any bruises here, but if you are in pain we can always find an ointment to put on you.”

“No, it’s- it’s fine.”

“All right, then.” Charles glanced wistfully one last time at that slim torso and lowered the undershirt.

The last part of their expedition was silent. 

Charles felt electrically charged and scrambled, hyper-aware of Lehnsherr’s every movement like a cat with a shiny object. He began to understand what was happening to him and he wasn’t sure he was happy with it.

When they said goodbye out of the Infirmary, Charles felt a deep dissatisfaction settle in the pit of his stomach.

***

Charles was seen strolling through the campus park with hands in his pockets and a cheeky swing to his hips.  
He pushed his sunglasses down on his nose to wink at a girl that had smiled in his direction. He opened his mouth to say hello, but someone interrupted him.  
“Xavier?”

Charles blinked in confusion a couple of times, then turned around towards the guy that had called for him.  
He was sitting on the ground with his back resting against a tree, legs stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles. The bottom of his boots was thick and chunky.  
Charles took a few steps towards him and tilted his head. His lips curled up in a flippant smile. “Erik… Lehnsherr?”  
Lehnsherr closed the book in his lap and raised an eyebrow. He squinted his eyes against the sun to take a good look at him.  
His eyebrow raised more. “Quite the outfit, you got there,” he said, tone clipped. 

Charles smirked and toyed with the collar of his black shirt, unbuttoned to the very limits of decency.  
He turned around and twisted his back in an attempt to look at his own ass. “What about these jeans?”  
There was a pause. Then a clearing of throat. “Perfect fit.”  
Charles faced him again and clapped his hands once in satisfaction. “I’m glad you like them.”  
“You’re not Charles, are you?”  
“What?”  
The rubbish bin on Charles’s right started shivering, and he took a step back. “That’s clearly his… body. But you are not Charles Xavier. What have you done to him? You have ten seconds to answer.“ 

"Raven Darkholme!" 

They both startled and turned towards Charles’s angered voice.  
"Uh oh,” Charles said.  
“What the Hell,” said Lehnsherr.  
“Would you be so kind as to explain to me why on Earth half of the bloody campus is thinking about my arse?”  
The new Charles stomped in front of the previous Charles and glared at him. “Well?”  
Previous Charles smiled slily. “You have a remarkable ass, brother dear.”  
New Charles flushed to the tip of his ears. “Why am I- are you dressed like that.”  
“It’s the outfit you wore on Friday night, don’t you remember? When that tall guy started to-”  
“I remember!”  
Previous Charles chuckled, eyes twinkling with mirth. “But if you prefer something else, I can always…"  
His words were interrupted by the soft skimming of blue scales, and suddenly his legs were bare under very short soccer shorts.  
There was a choking sound, then Lehnsherr began to cough convulsively.  
The new Charles, the Charles in a sensible cardigan, turned to look at him with a shocked expression, as if he had noticed his presence just then. If possible, he got redder. "I- I can explain,” he stammered. “My sister Raven is-"  
"A shapeshifter.” Previous Charles smirked one last time, then the blue scales moved again, and in his place appeared a blonde girl with round cheeks and the same smile as before. She waved a hand in Lehnsherr’s direction. “Nice to meet you, hot guy.”

Lehnsherr seemed starstruck, and made to get up, palms on the ground. “Incredible.”  
“Isn’t she?” Charles looked softly at his little sister, then caressed her golden locks. “You can trust him, Raven. You’re safe here.”  
Raven seemed uncertain, so Charles squeezed her elbow in encouragement. “Try to be clothed, though.”

She bit down on her lower lip, glanced around at the semi-deserted park, then took a deep breath to steel herself.  
One more rustle and she was of a brilliant blue. She blinked her fierce, yellow eyes open.  
Lehnsherr’s eyes widened, too, and he got abruptly to his feet.  
Don’t make me regret this.  
Lehnsherr slowed down and focused on Charles as if emerging from a fog bank. He blinked and nodded once.  
“Your mutation is breath-taking,” he said to Raven, earnestness bleeding through every word . “You shouldn’t hide what you are… perfection. ”  
Charles saw Raven’s cheeks turn purple and chuckled. Something sharp prodded at the bottom of his heart, but he ignored it.  
Thank you.  
Lehnsherr turned his head towards him and smiled.

***

“Charles?”  
Charles looked up from the tiny tornadoes the circular motion of his spoon had been creating in his tea for two minutes now. “Mh?”  
“You’re gloomy,” said Raven, and brought the steaming cup of coffee to her mouth with both hands.  
“I’m not,” Charles pouted. “I’m listening, you were talking about that model friend of yours, Elsa.”  
Raven raised an eyebrow. “Emma.”  
“Oh.”  
Raven tilted her head and blew on the hot liquid. She glanced around the bar with nonchalance. “You know, he didn’t mean it that way.”  
Charles fidgeted with the napkin. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he mumbled. He didn’t need his telepathy to know that Raven had just rolled her eyes.  
“That’s a pity, because if you knew I would have told you that there’s no comparison between the way he looked at me when I was you, and the way he looked at me when I was me. Perfect mutation or not.” She shrugged. “Just so you know, brother dear.”  
“Oh,” replied Charles softly.  
“Oh, indeed.” Raven hid her knowing smirk in a generous sip of coffee.

***

Charles didn’t know how he got there.  
He remembered having thought that if he was in Azazel’s apartment and Azazel was Lehnsherr’s neighbor, then the apartment on the left had to be Lehnsherr’s. 

But he didn’t remember how, physically speaking, he had gotten off the couch, through the outrageous party and in front of Lehnsherr’s door.  
Let alone why he had done it. He loved parties, and he loved flirting at parties. 

Wait. 

He felt like he was moving towards a revelation.  
Where on Earth had he left his beer?  
His head was spinning mercilessly, and he thought sensitive to rest it against Lehnsherr’s door. 

Except he took the measurements wrong and banged his forehead against the hard wood. He meowled painfully but didn’t move.  
Why hadn’t Moira taken the alcohol away from him? He evidently wasn’t cons-, conscien-, responsible enough to make his own decisions.  
The door supporting his head suddenly disappeared.  
Charles gasped, stumbled and started falling forward like a palm-tree trying to hold an overgrown coconut.  
He scrunched his eyes, and the last thing he saw was a surprisingly clean gray moquette.  
He stopped mid-air.  
“Xavier?” Lehnsherr’s baffled voice came from somewhere above his nape.

Charles slowly regained awareness of his own body, and realized that someone was steadily gripping at both of his shoulders to keep him upright. He seized on the first thing he found and heaved up. “Lehnsherr?”  
“Who else should I be, you knocked on my door!”  
“I didn’t knock on your door,” Charles corrected. “I banged my head against it. It was an-, un-… I didn’t want to do it.”  
He flexed his fingers and saw them dipping in Lehnsherr’s naked, bulging biceps. He jumped.  
Then squeezed them again for the people. 

He finally stepped back from Lehnsherr’s tempting body and saw him frowning. Then smiling.  
“Xavier,” he chirped in amusement. “Are you drunk?”  
“Pissed,” Charles confirmed solemnly.  
Lehnsherr snorted, then leaned against the door frame. When he folded his arms, Charles swayed dangerously on his feet. “I’m surprised, you usually hold your liquor quite well.”  
Charles puffed out his chest. “I really do, don’t I?”  
Then just as quickly he deflated, suddenly gloomy, and pouted. “I was bored and kept drinking. I thought Azazel’s party would be more fun.”

And it looked like it was, at the beginning. Plenty of people, plenty of alcohol, dancing bodies, excited minds buzzing in his periphery. The music was still hammering against the wall and his temples were damp. 

Charles twisted his lips. “Why weren’t you there?”  
Lehnsherr looked startled and scratched at his nape. “I had to, mmh, study.”  
“I didn’t know who to argue with.”  
“Is arguing the only thing you do in your free time?”  
“I was talking to a girl and I said, you know, because I knew how you would have reacted, I said that the law is the actual proof of humanity’s willingness to do right by each other… “ Lehnsherr emitted a disconcerted sound. Charles beamed and flapped excitedly his hand in his direction. “Exactly! But she just agreed with me. It was,” Charles scrunched his face. “Bad.”  
“Was it?” Lehnsherr’s upper lip had curled slightly.  
He really had no right to look that yummy in the middle of the night. And soft.  
“Yeah,” Charles grumbled. “I tried flirting, but…”  
Lehnsherr slowly straightened from his position against the door frame. Something started buzzing against Charles’ headache like a turned-on mosquito swatter. “But?”

Charles massaged his temple and shrugged. “Didn’t really feel like it. So I left.” He hummed.” I haven’t been polite, now that I think about it.”  
He stretched his telepathy towards Azazel’s apartment and groped clumsily at every mind stacked in there until he found what he was looking for.  
It felt like staggering in a crowded room and tapping on people’s shoulders to make them turn around. “Oh,” he said, somewhat relieved. “Doesn’t seem so upset: she’s making out with someone she thinks is hot.

“When he got back in his head he realized that Lehnsherr was looking pensively at him. Intensely waiting. “Why are you here, Charles?”  
Charles frowned again, because he really didn’t know. He just. Wanted to. He guessed, or he wouldn’t have been there in the first place. He tried to untangle the mess of his soaked, blubbering thoughts to find a thread of logic. 

“I feel,” he attempted. “Satisfied. With you here. I’m not bored and fidgeting anymore.” He was nervous. Why was he nervous? His fingers kept twisting around each other. “Well, I am. But in my stomach, not here.” He tapped twice on his own temple to explain himself. “What if I… I think I like arguing with you more than flirting with anyone else. ”  
Charles was suddenly invested by the mental equivalent of a geyser, boiling and whipping in his head, but couldn’t make out the flavor of Lehnsherr’s thoughts. His heart was stomping in his chest.  
He lifted his eyes and locked them with his. 

Lehnsherr looked flabbergasted. He was gripping at the door frame with white knuckles, arms strained, and something in the keyhole was furiously spinning. He stepped forward, then changed his mind and stopped where he stood.  
His voice trembled when he said: “Maybe you should go, now, Charles. I don’t think it’s a good idea to- ”  
Charles flinched as if slapped.  
He ran away ignoring Lehnsherr calling his name.

***

Charles was zombing his way across the hall.  
He felt ashamed and vulnerable, with his guts inside out. He was on edge, waiting mindlessly for anyone to start laughing at his stupidity.

Not that he thought that he would make fun of what had happened…

When he heard someone calling his name, Charles considered ignoring them.  
He tried to sink in his own shoulders and turned towards the voice.  
The principal’s secretary was hurrying towards him and waving something shiny in his hand.  
“Xavier,” he huffed, reprimanding. His forehead was damp and he looked like he had spent the morning rolling up and down the sleeves of his shirt and moving boxes. “Here, keep this.”  
Something small and cylindric was hastily put in Charles’ hand. It was the key to his collar. “What is-”  
“Now that it is done, please tell your friend Erik Lehnsherr to reshape the locks of our offices and toilets. Maybe we can’t prove that it was his doing, but we certainly know it was. We are keeping an eye on him. Have a nice day.”

He stomped away leaving Charles gaping in the middle of the corridor.  
Charles looked down at the key in the center of his palm and closed his fingers around it. “Fuck. Couldn’t you be a bit less. Fuck you, Lehnsherr.”  
“I thought you were about to do just that.”  
Charles tiredly hauled his lips in a smile and faced his just arrived friend.  
“He didn’t like me that much, Moira.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “It happens.”  
Mora frowned in confusion and adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “How do you-”  
“I…” Charles rubbed his arm and looked away. “I may have told him that I liked him when I was drunk after Azazel’s party. He told me it was better if I went away.”  
Moira blinked and tilted her head. “It’s just… So weird.” She admitted frankly. “Like, really weird.”  
“How so?”  
“Have you seen Davis around, lately?”  
“I don’t even know who he’s supposed to be.”  
Moira rolled her eyes. “The bag of dicks that pushed you against the wall last week.”  
“Oh,” Charles said. He remembered that day for a different reason altogether. “What’s up with him?”  
Moira didn’t even try to hide her pleased, seraphic smile. “He has a black eye and a dislocated jaw. He hasn’t been able to mutter his homophobic and mutantphobic shit since that day.” She folded her arms and raised one suggestive eyebrow. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Charles stammered. “I-It doesn’t mean anything,” he denied. The bruise on Lehnsherr’s face was freshly painted in his mind. His heart sunk in his stomach and started hammering there.  
“Lehnsherr has always advocated for mutants. He would have done the same for anyone.” Evidently.  
“He beat the shit out of him, Charles. He risked suspension. At best. Probably expulsion.” Moira eyed the key in his hand and stared. “Twice this week, I would say.”  
Charles shrugged again, because he didn’t know what to say to that. 

Lehnsherr wasn’t interested, had said that much. It was better not to dwell on things that almost were. Charles sighed. Or weren’t, apparently, because it was all in his head. He probably spent too much time in there.  
Moira huffed.  
“Do you think I should go thank him for this?” Charles asked, holding the key between his thumb and index.  
Moira linked their arms. “I really think you should, Charles, if you feel like it.”

Charles heard a commotion, then the door of the classroom swung open and banged against the opposite wall. Someone gasped. 

Hank appeared on the threshold, pale and agitated. 

“McCoy!” The professor exclaimed. “What on Earth is happening?”  
“I’m really, really sorry, professor,” Hank answered, and he was so upset that his skin was swinging between blue and white. “But I need Charles. Immediately.”  
Charles stood up and Hank turned towards him. “It’s about Alex. We’d ask Lehnsherr, but we can’t find him anywhere…”  
Charles pulled the key out of his back pocket and shoved it in the collar. It clicked open with a mechanical swish, and Charles tossed it on the desk. 

Voices arose in his head as he had just turned the volume on. “Where is he?”  
“Park, behind the cafeteria,” Hank answered.  
Charles hurried down the stairs and together they ran across the corridor. 

Alex was standing in the middle of the park, alone. The grass around him was scorched and greyish, and Charles could smell smoke. 

Alex’s shirt was pulsing red in correspondence of his chest. 

“Oh, thank you, fuck,” he said when he saw Charles stepping towards him, Hank on his tow. He was shivering from head to toe. “Just knock me out already.”  
“There’s no need for that, Alex,” Charles said, keeping his voice steady. His throat was tight. “Take it easy.”  
Alex scoffed angrily, and the red in his chest heightened. He clenched his fists and snarled. “Easy? I was about to explode in the middle of the Cafeteria, Xavier. Fucking explode.”

Charles could feel anger, and frustration, and biting terror howling and scratching at his shields like rabid dogs. Everything was flashing red and white, everything was swirling, his mind was cracking under the blows of panic. But above all else he felt a growing heat right over his stomach, boiling and buzzing, ready to cut through his flesh. 

“But you didn’t, Alex. You controlled it.”  
“Barely.” Alex looked away, chest heaving. His muscles were strained in the effort of keeping the energy inside his body. “I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be here. I can’t, why don’t you understand. I just can’t.”  
“But you do, you can,” Charles replied firmly, and stepped forward. “You have been here for months, don’t let one slip up mess with your head.”  
“My slip-ups could cost lives!”  
“Mine too,” Charles said, smiling sadly. “And Erik’s, or Janos’. You deserve to be here, Alex, and you’re making wonderful progress every day. People want you here and will help you. I promise.”

The raw dogs had receded now, and while Alex looked him in the eyes, vulnerable and hopeful, Charles could only feel angry birds screeching.  
Terror was no longer stabbing his shields, but Alex’s thoughts had to be directed elsewhere, or they could start collapsing on themselves all over again.  
“Besides, you can’t go before declaring yourself.”  
Alex’s mind snapped in surprise, as if kicked out of track. His eyes flashed towards a point behind Charles, where Hank had been fidgeting for the last five minutes. 

Hank held his breath loudly.

“You’re such a little shit,” Alex accused Charles, blushing furiously and looking at everything that wasn’t Hank.  
Charles smirked through a fog of embarrassed excitement. “I never said whom you should declare to, dear. But it has been a long time coming, so…”  
Alex glared under thick eyebrows, but at least his body had stopped trembling and glowing red. “You’re one to talk,” he huffed and folded his arms. “Clearly you and Lehnsherr still have your heads up your asses.”  
It was Charles’ turn to gape, but immediately stopped when he saw Alex sneering.  
“Your sources are unreliable, I’m afraid. There’s nothing between us.”  
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Says who.”  
Charles swallowed. “Says he.”  
“That’s not what–” Alex stopped and lifted his hands in surrender. “Know what. Not my business. Morons. Sexual tension is so thick between you two not even my blasts could cut through it. It’s disgusting.”  
“Mmh,” came Hank thoughtful voice. “I’ll have to vouch for that.”  
“Shut up,” Charles grumbled, cheeks flagging hot in embarrassment. “I came here to help, and look at what I have to endure. I don’t deserve this.”  
“You started it.”  
“Count to one hundred, and if you’re still not shooting lasers through your nostrils by then, you’re good to go. Undeserving scoundrel.”

***

This time Charles knocked. 

He had this whole speech prepared, schemingly littered with thankfulness and apologies about ill-time confessions, and closed by a joke to lighten up the mood.  
He felt clear-minded and self-possessed, with steady hands and a firm voice.  
He raised his mental shields.  
He swallowed against the heart in his throat.  
He also felt nauseous, but that was irrelevant, all things considered. He just needed to breathe and stick to the scenario sprawled out in his mind. No interruptions, no blubbering, no undignified ogling… 

The door swung open.  
Lehnsherr was steaming hot.  
Literally.  
Fat droplets of water clung to the wet tips of his hair and splashed on his neck to ran down the collar of his shirt, darkening the fabric. The bare skin of his arms and throat glistened and puffed slow swirls of steam.  
He was barefoot.  
Charles closed his mouth audibly and irritably. “Oh, fuck me.”

Lehnsherr stared and Charles’ eyes widened. 

“Oh, well,” exclaimed a frenzied voice behind Lehnsherr. Charles heard a crash. “Look how late it is. Time flies when you have fun.” Something slid open. The voice stopped just to hurriedly clarify. “Not a sexy kind of fun, obviously. The studying kind of fun. You know. Studying together, as buddies. Platonically and innocently. I’ll just go, now. Leave you guys to your things.”

A few moments passed. “Has Sean just left through the window?” 

Lehnsherr pursued his lips not to laugh. “It would seem so, yeah.”

Charles nodded slowly and bit his lower lip. “May I come in? It will only take a moment.”

“Yes, sure. Sure. Let me just…” 

Lehnsherr moved away from the threshold and disappeared in the small bathroom on the right while Charles took a few steps into the room. He closed the door behind himself and rested the back of his head against it. He inhaled deeply. 

Lehnsherr’s room was so tidy. 

Everything in its place, books straight on the shelves, chair aligned under the desk and no half-open stash in sight. 

Only the bed was messy, with the blanket crumpled around the mold of Sean’s supine body and a book splayed upside-down on the crooked pillow. 

Charles realized that he had been staring at the bed for a solid ten seconds and diverted his eyes. 

Lehnsherr reappeared with drier hair and a faint smell of cologne. He was hot only in the metaphorical sense, now, which was more than Charles could bare nonetheless. “Sorry about that, I had just had a shower while Sean pretended to study on my notes.”

He pulled at the hem of his t-shirt and briefly looked around. “Look, do you want to-”

“I wanted to thank you for the collar. And apologize,” Charles blurted out loudly. Then cringed. He put his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath. “For last night, when I. You know. I was drunk and I shouldn’t have done it.”

Lehnsherr tilted his head and fixed his piercing eyes on him. “Shouldn’t you have?” 

“Well, no. It was late, I was pissed, you were probably sleeping and I came here… saying things.”

“Things,” Lehnsherr replied, and smiled amusedly. 

Charles wanted the linoleum to swallow him whole. “Yeah, things that could have made you uncomfortable so it’s only fair of me-”

“I definitely wasn’t uncomfortable, Charles.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Charles huffed, piqued. He folded his arms on his chest. “You’re the mighty Lehnsherr. I was merely suggesting that my things could have ruined our… dynamic. And I don’t want that.”

“Because you like arguing with me,” Lehnsherr concluded. And why didn’t he stop smiling. He looked like an idiot. 

No, that wasn’t true. He looked relaxed and distracting. 

Charles grunted. “Yes.”

“More than you like flirting with anyone else, if I recall correctly.”

Charles grimaced and shot him a dirty look. “Yes. Isn’t your ego big enough already?”

“You know, Charles,” Lehnsherr said casually, but stepped forward very deliberately. “For a telepath, you really don’t understand people at all.”

Charles gasped, outraged. “Excuse me, you-”

He was cut off when Lehnsherr put five fingertips on his chest and pushed him against the door. Charles had to pin his palms against it to stay balanced. “It would be incredibly irritating if it weren’t so endearing,” Lehnsherr murmured. 

Charles’ blood babbled, his heart babbled. “E-endearing?” he babbled. 

“Quite.”

“I’m at loss here,” Charles admitted. Then quickly added, because up close Lehnsherr smelled mouth-watering. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Lehnsherr rolled his eyes. “I recall telling you in at least two different occasions that I don’t mind arguing with you.”

“And what is that supposed to-” 

Lehnsherr raised both of his eyebrows suggestively. Then tilted his head. 

“That was your way of flirting?” 

“That was your way of flirting, too.”

“Well, I…” Charles frowned. “But the other night you sent me away. I felt like an idiot, I thought I had misunderstood everything.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Lehnsherr moved his hand to Charles’ collar and started playing pensively with the fabric around his throat. “But you’re a telepath, I thought you had gathered that I just didn’t want to snog you senseless while you were drunk.”

Charles stared at him, waiting for the words to settle in. “Snog me-,” it came out as a strangled whistle. His face was on fire. “I am fully sober now. Really. One hundred percent. ”

Lehnsherr chuckled lightly, then sighed. His fingers climbed Charles’ throat, tickled his Adam’s apple and traced the curve of his lips. His cheeks colored slightly when his thumb managed to pull down Charles’ lower lip. He didn’t seem able to look away. “Would you mind terribly if…” 

“Oh,” muttered Charles. “For God’s-” 

He gripped at Lehnsherr’s t-shirt and dragged him down. 

Their mouths clashed, open, hot and greedy. 

Charles whimpered and tightened his hold on the fabric until his knuckles hurt. His other hand skimmed through Lehnsherr’s short, wet air, nail scraping at his bare skin, and encircled his nape. He wanted to keep him close, close, closer. 

And Lehnsherr seemed famished, too.

He trapped Charles’ lower lip between his teeth and pulled at it until Charles moaned in his mouth. Only then he let go of it with a low, murmured apology, then swept the tip of his tongue over the swollen flesh to make it better. The sting of it poured hotly in Charles’ stomach. 

Charles was so lost in the labored, breathless sighs showering his cheekbones that he almost missed the arm that encircled his waist to drag him forward and press him against the hot firmness of Lehnsherr’s body. They slot together, chest to chest, and Charles’ leg found its place between Lehnsherr’s sweatpants-covered tights. 

Lehnsherr inhaled harshly against the corner of his lips. 

Charles felt drunk, light-headed, one second away from realizing he was standing on a vacuum and start falling. When the rough tip of one finger found its way under the waist of his trousers and into the dip of his hip-bone, he moaned and pulled away. 

Lehnsherr was looking at him as if Charles were covered in ice-cream and he had just found a spoon. His green eyes had become dark and hazy, and Charles had to swallow twice before he could hope to emit any articulate sound. “Will you go out with me?” 

Lehnsherr blinked, taken aback. He visibly tried to make sense of what he was hearing while the blood in his body made its way back to his brain. It took a few seconds. “I’ll fucking date the shit out of you, Xavier, if you let me.”

“Oh,” Charles said, then smiled so hard his flushed cheeks hurt. His stomach clenched and unclenched happily. “Good, because I don’t want this to be some sort of hate-filled-one-time-thing. You know.”

At that Lehnsherr deflated like a pierced balloon, but obediently disentangled himself from Charles’ grip. He cocked his head and stared wistfully at his lips, with the face of a man that had just seen his ice-cream hit the ground. “Anything you want.”

Charles frowned. “What are you doing?” He complained, then grabbed the hem of his shirt to tug insistently at it. “I said I didn’t want this to be a one time thing, not that it couldn’t be a first time thing.”

Lehnsherr threw his head back and barked out a laugh. 

“What would you say if we moved to the b-”

Charles didn’t have the chance to finish. Lehnsherr literally hauled him to the bed, and Charles found himself laughing breathlessly on the messy blanket. He extracted the pointy book from behind his head and handed it to Lehnsherr with a smug wiggle. “You may want to put it away on your shelf.”

Lehnsherr didn’t even look away from Charles’ face. He took the book and tossed it carelessly on the carpet: it fell a few feet behind him with a resolute thud. 

The door was locked with an imperious flick of the metalbender’s wrist, but his fervour was enough to make the metal squelch painfully. 

When he started climbing the bed, the mattress shifting under his weight, Charles wasn’t laughing anymore. He got rid of his shoes without touching the laces and slid towards the middle of the narrow space, heart racing in expectation. He bit his lower lip as swift, practical movements of long limbs caged him in his place. 

Knees closed against his hips, and big, strong hands found their place on either side of his head. 

Charles propped up on his elbows to look up expectantly at the face hovering him, and his arms brushed briefly against Lehnsherr’s inner wrists. 

Lehnsherr was wearing a strangely vulnerable, happy expression on his features, and lowered his head so that the tip of his nose was stroking slowly Charles’ cheekbone. Charles’ skin heated under his breath. “Is it alright?” 

Charles purred and tipped his head back. “More than alright.”  
Chapped, warm lips brushed their way down his jaw, where soft bites nipped at his skin. Charles couldn’t help but think that he would smell of his cologne for hours, after. 

Lehnsherr lavished his throat with attention, from the light touches of puckered lips to the blunt marking of teeth. If the sounds he was making were any indication, he found great satisfaction in the dark stains that were probably appearing in the wake of his ministrations. 

Charles was too far gone to complain about propriety and discretion; his body was fastly covering in goosebumps, as if ice-cubes were sliding down his back. He was diving in a hot, bubbling stream of gentle pleasure, and his telepathy frizzled in his mind, ready to share trembling fantasies and languorous sensations. 

His eyes shot wide open. 

One of Lehnsherr’s hand had brushed its way to his backside, light as the flame of a candle, and now his nails were toying with the seam of his pocket. 

Long, callous fingers, fingers pianists dreamt of, squeezed at the round flesh. 

Charles gasped loudly. 

He heard and felt Lehnsherr’s deep giggle vibrate against his throat, and had to move his hand on the back of Lehnsherr’s head to keep him there. 

“What?”

“I like it,” Lehnsherr answered, then kissed the skin right under his lobe. 

Charles cleared his throat. “Like what?”

“That you just can’t keep quiet. In any situation.” 

Charles scoffed and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re such an ass!” 

Lehnsherr’s chest started trembling over him, filled with silent laughter, and Charles used his distraction to roll them both over and straddle his thighs. 

“I can’t believe you have actually said that.”

His outrage only had the effect of redoubling Lehnsherr’s laughter, and Charles started tickling at his sides in retaliation. “Apologise!”  
Lehnsherr shook his head impenitently, face red from exertion, and tried to wriggle out of his grasp. His smile was wolfish, all teeth on display, and his face scrunched so much around it that his eyes were almost slits. “But it’s true!”  
“Felon,” accused Charles, and assaulted his jolting stomach.

“All right,” panted Lehnsherr, raising both hands in surrender. “All right!” 

Charles stopped and folded his arms on his chest, waiting. 

“What I meant is that I like how… responsive you are.” Lehnsherr looked at him from behind his long long eyelashes, then diverted his eyes. He swallowed, and Charles saw his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “To me. There’s nothing I say or do that leaves you indifferent, and it’s exciting. You are exc-”

His words were lost in a groan.

Lehnsherr looked at him with a gaping mouth, because Charles had - quite inelegantly, he had to admit, but efficiently nonetheless - sat down on his crotch. Charles tilted his head questioningly at him and shifted his hips forward. His jeans were too rigid to allow him more flexibility than what was strictly necessary, but he had to make do with them. 

Besides, the friction with Lehnsherr’s sweatpants was a thing of interest. 

When the button of his jeans stroke just right, Lehnsherr hissed between his teeth. “Charles, are you sure that’s how you-”

Charles made sure to twist more slowly, this time, back and forth. He stared at him right in the eyes and licked his lips. “More than sure. Are you okay with this?” 

“Fuck, ok. Totally ok. Never been okayer.” Another grunt. “Just- just come here, all right. I need you to-”

Charles waited for Lehnsherr to frantically crawl up the bed and lean against the headboard, knees slightly bent and joggers stretched over an already noticeable bulge. His fingers were twitching on his lap, his eyes moved restlessly on Charles’ body, the hollow his throat, the curve of his mouth, the shape of his heaving chest. 

His own, sinful lips were slightly parted, and soft, quick puff of breaths rolled out of them. 

His stare was like cigarette burns on Charles’ skin. 

Charles bit down on his lower lip - it stung still, he realized with a shiver-, and moved to straddle Lehnsherr’s legs again. He stopped just over his mid-thighs and sat down. 

Lehnsherr let our an aborted moan and yanked forward. His right hand immediately flew to claw at the curve of Charles’ hip, hot and firm under his shirt. His left one carded through Charles’ hair to drag him down and press their bodies flush together. 

One of them whimpered. 

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” Lehnsherr confessed to Charles’ lips.

“You’ve got me.”

The kiss that followed was deep and heady with anticipation, like red wine spilling on their tongues and down their throats. 

Charles had to hold onto the headboard with both his hands to keep his balance, but was more than willing to ignore the stiffness that was crawling up his neck in favor of keeping their lips sealed together. 

He could feel Erik’s stomach tremble against his, and didn’t want to move away. Possibly ever. 

He pressed their hips together. And again. And again. 

His movements were tentative, at first, the angle not quite right and the layers of fabric between them hard to ignore. But Charles twisted, rolled and harmonized his body in tune with Lehnsherr’s breathless moans. He swallowed every one of them, drunker and drunker. 

Every grunt, every tug at his hair, every scrap of nails against his skin yanked at the boiling knot in his belly. 

He wanted to give Lehnsherr everything, and his telepathy wanted it, too. It slammed against the feverish shields of his mind like a ball in a flipper, frantic and greedy, ready to dive into Lehnsherr’s pleasure and feed it until it was the only thing he could feel, until it was the only thing the whole campus could feel. 

Lehnsherr planted his heels on the mattress and lifted to meet him in the middle of his descent; Charles closed his eyes against the lightning that struck his mind.

His control was slipping, his shields were slamming like windows on a stormy day, all because of the scorching tangle in his belly that set his flesh on fire. 

And Lehnsherr. 

The low sounds that were slipping from his mouth made Charles’ hair stand up. His thighs shook rhythmically, his eyelashes fluttered open and close on blown, unfocused pupils, his waist brushed against Charles’s every time their hips met, and in those brief moments, Charles could feel his heated heartbeat on his own skin. 

Lehnsherr was, my God… 

“You know-,” Lehnsherr panted in his ear, strained and out of breath. Charles felt his shirt raise and come off of his increasingly tired back, allowing a breath of cold air to sneak in. 

But it was the touch of bare skin that gave him goosebumps. 

Lehnsherr’s hand scraped between his shoulder blades, and down along his spine, following the dip of each vertebra and boiling like melted candle wax. It stopped to massage the skin around Charles’ tailbone; little, innocent circular movements. “Given our newfound partnership, you should stop thinking about me as ‘Lehnsherr’. ”

Charles would have worried about that slip in control, and was about to do just that, but then slightly rough fingertips disappeared under the waist of his jeans, and the only thing he could manage to do was hide his broken whimper in the hollow of Lehnsherr’s clavicle. He was close, he was so very close. 

“Chaaaarles,” singsonged Lehnsherr in reprimand, and twisted his wrist. 

Charles cried out and shivered from head to toe. He used his last breath of mindfulness to put his mouth on Lehnsherr’s ear and murmur: “Erik”. 

He heard a deep growl resembling a profanity, felt a hard chest jolt under him, then slumped on Erik’s satiated body and rested his forehead on his shoulder. 

He let himself be lulled by Erik’s increasingly calm breathing for a couple of minutes, big hand stroking his spine, then blinked his eyes open. 

Given his position and the fact that Erik had tilted his head back, he was only able to see an Adam’s apple and a perfectly squared jaw. 

“You know,” came Erik’s used voice from above him. “Because of this, I’ll risk an embarrassing pavlovian reaction every time you say my name.”

Charles snickered devilishly, kissed his covered shoulder and moved away from his lap.

He went as far as kneeling on the mattress at Erik’s right. 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Charles blinked with his hands still on Erik’s chest. “I’m moving, I must be crashing you.”

Erik bent his neck to frown at him, deeply displeased. “Don’t move.” He shifted his legs to make room for Charles. 

“But-”

The hand that was still on his back kept him flushed against his body. “Don’t move.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “At least let me…" 

He lied down on the bed, leg wrapped around Erik’s calf and head resting on his broad chest. He was rewarded by gentle fingers stroking his locks. 

“Erik?“ 

"Mh?" 

"Have you ever lost control of your powers because of sex?" 

He felt Erik’s pompous scoff vibrate in his body. "Of course not, I have full reign of my powers, unlike someone I know." 

"Oh,” said Charles. “I see.”

Erik arched his neck to have him in his line of sight. His eyes were narrowed in suspicion. “You see?" 

Charles hummed and started to draw slow, inexistent patterns on Erik’s stomach. 

His fingers crawled to the hem of his shirt and slipped under it. Charles splayed his hand on Erik’s skin and dragged lightly his nails around his navel. Erik hissed. 

"So you’re telling me that the doorknob has resembled that all along?" 

***

Some people, apart from being without decency, also don’t have any survival instincts. 

That’s the conclusion that Charles drew in bafflement as Davis mimicked an obscene act in his direction. His evidently swollen jaw didn’t stop his idiocy. 

"Has that fucker just-" 

"Nope,” replied Charles happily, and gently pushed Erik’s head back on his lap. “Not at all.”

Erik’s growl subsided when Charles started to stroke his hair. “I’m gonna punch him later,” he muttered, and adjusted his back on the grass so that his neck rested on Charles’ bent thigh. He lifted his book and his face was now hidden behind it. “When you’re not looking.”

Charles tugged at one, dark tuft. “No,” he singsonged. “You won’t.”

“Listen, if that’s because you can defend yourself, I know. I just find it extremely satisfying. You have no idea how he cried when I kicked him in the-" 

"You won’t,” interrupted Charles forcefully, “because violence is never the answer." 

He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore Davis’ ongoing harassment. "People need to be educated to tolerance, that’s the only way to make sure they will respect those who are physically weaker, too. You know that violence only calls-." 

He stopped and frowned. 

Davis was now mouthing "fag” at them and mimicking kissing noises. “Oh, for God’s-" 

Charles brought two fingers to his temple, and on the other side of the park Davis tripped and fell in the mud. 

He tried to hide his grin when he caught Erik giving him a weird look. 

He blushed. "We can start teaching him tolerance tomorrow." 

Erik kept staring at him from below, and tilted his head pensively. "You know, I think I’m falling for you quite hard.”

And then kept on reading. 

Charles didn’t breathe for a solid ten seconds, then bent down to kiss him senseless. 

Erik laughed and folded his arms behind Charles’ nape, book limp in his hand. 

***

If people had expected for their interactions to change just because they had gotten together, they were disappointed. 

They didn’t. 

It was quite weird, actually, because they started to wind up their rants with endearments. And not in a passive-aggressive way. 

“So, you see that’s utter bullshit, liebling.”

“That’s because you have your head up your ass, love.”

“It’s a percentage, you stunning asshole, you can’t refute it!" 

And so on. 

On a particular occasion, the shouting match never seemed to end. 

That until Charles angrily growled, voice rough and strained: "You’re not making sense, Erik.”

Erik’s eyes had widened and he had fallen into a stunned silence. 

No one really knew what exactly had happened, but both Charles and Erik had come late and disheveled to their following classes. 

And for a good thirty minutes the janitor closet hadn’t been accessible.


End file.
